Meditation Can Permanently Eliminate I-focused Narrative

At the Science and NonDuality Conference in San Rafael, CA from Oct 20 - 23, 2011, i gave a presentation entitled "No Thoughts - No Time".

The conference's theme this year was "On The Edge of Time..." and my preso was to show that if one could move beyond "selfing"/I, me, my-ing", they could simultaneously find themselves w/no sense of personal movement through time. As you will see, if you click on the link above, the opening slide was Ramana's

"Time is only an idea. The interval between two states is called time. A state cannot come into being unless the mind calls it into existence. If the mind is not made use of, there is no concept of time…The question of time does not arise at all to the one established in one’s true nature.

The first reference was the excellent Harvard paper by Andrews-Hanna, et. al paper in Neuron in 2010 entitled "Functional Anatomic Fractionation of the Brain's Default Network". The seminal graphic from this paper

shows in the lower left hand corner, the 11 main "selfing" centers that create the narrative " I, me, my" default mode network (DMN) that occurs when our brain isn't doing something specific, like "tasking", "doing", etc. The two core centers, the Posterior Cingulate Cortex (PCC) and the medial PreFrontal Cortex (mPFC) are in yellow. There are two subsidiary networks with different functions, the blue matrix does the "me - not me", and the green matrix does the "me now - me in the future", the "me in time" matrix, the focus of this conference. The thickness of the lines between centers indicates how often their activity is correlated, and presumably connected. If the core PCC for example, is deactivated, then presumably both subsidiary networks would be shut down.

The second key paper referenced was the Farb paper, from the University of Toronto in 2007 published in SAND, "Attending To The Present; Mindfulness Meditation Reveals Distinct Neural Modes of Self-Reference" which was discussed in an earlier blog.

The key graphic from this paper shows the difference between novice meditators (gray bars) and those who have had 45 minutes/day of mindfulness meditation training for two months (black bars). In this short interval, their functional operating mode moved from the traditional narrative DMN core of PCC and mPFC (in blue) we also saw in the Andrews-Hanna paper to a different functional pattern, in which right side centers, the lateral PreFrontal Cortex (lPFC), insula, and posterior parietal cortex (PPC) (in orange and red) were activated as the PCC and mPFC were deactivated during meditation, which resulted in an "experiential" mode, of "now, now, now" w/o narrative. After meditation, the meditators reverted to the narrative DMN w/active PPC and mPFC.

The interesting question was whether this change in the DMN seen in the meditators could be made permanent, i.e. could the narrative DMN be permanently shifted.

The third key paper referenced by Jud Brewer (introduced earlier in this blog), et.al from Yale entitled "Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and
connectivity" (accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) answered that question, affirmatively. The key graphic from that paper

shows that the Theravadin meditators in the study, who are principally "mindfulness" meditators w/10,000 hrs+ of practice, doing any of three different meditations, a) choiceless awareness/mindfulness (green bars), b) concentration on the breath (blue bars), or c) "metta"/loving kindness (red bars), demonstrated that they deactivated the PCC - mPFC core with all three meditations and when they were not doing any "tasking", i.e. at rest. Their DMN had been permanently changed from the narrative mode to the "experiential" mode.


The next step was to subtract the control folks' results in the study from the experienced meditators' results to see what the differences were both while resting/not tasking and when meditating. The result was a great surprise.

By looking at the meditators > controls results in the third column, you can see that the difference was that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was increasingly activated (two top rows) in both "baseline" and "meditation", as was our old friend from the Farb study, the lateral prefrontal cortex (lPFC) in the two bottom rows, particularly in "baseline" and somewhat in "meditation". The bottom line is that these two centers, one whose function is for "monitoring" (ACC) and one for "cognitive control" (lPFC) have been activated when the PCC-mPFC is deactivated, presumably to watch if the PCC-mPFC core begins to "reactivate" so that cognitive control can be exerted to deactivate it again.

Oh, and yes, BTW, when this happens, the sense of personal "time" is gone, to the theme of the preso and the conference.

As has been discussed in earlier blogs, "i" am heavily involved in this study, was presumably the first "non-Theravadin" to have been scanned, and am active in working w/Jud Brewer and four of the most-advanced Theravadins in the study to lay out the future direction for the work. i am also working w/Jud to secure philanthropic funding to continue this work @ Yale, and possibly other universities. There is a subsequent paper which has been generated and just submitted on real time fMRI (rt-fMRI) in which the key PCC "selfing" center is watched, second-by-second. This effort forms the basis for the Go Blue initiative both of which will be discussed in this blog subsequently.